If Only You Knew

by Claire Allan

  “It’s Betty,” her mum said, her voice cracking.

  The memory came to Ava of a well-spoken woman in delicious purple satinshoes with a delicate floral detail who had held her hand as she sobbed through her beloved granny’s funeral. They had gone to sink the better part of two bottles of wine at a restaurant afterwards – talking into the wee small hours. Ava had been very taken with this bohemian creature with wild curly hair and a gentle smile, who looked years younger than her age.

  “I love your shoes,” Ava had told her, admiring the large sequinned flower, and the flared heels. Betty was a woman who knew good shoes. Ava had eyed her own sensible flats, which she’d bought off a hanging stand in Primark, with a sense of disgust.

  “They’re vintage,” Betty had said, “I picked them up for ten euro in a market in Paris.”

  “They’re amazing,” Ava had slurred.

  “Tell you what, I’ll leave them to you in my will. When I pop my clogs, you can slip them on your feet and keep them warm for me,” Betty had said and the pair of them laughed uproariously.

  “Oh Ava, pet, can you come over?” Ava’s mother sobbed, cutting through her thoughts. “Betty’s dead. My baby sister is dead!”

  When she arrived at her mother’s house, having deposited Maisie back with her still-sleepy father, Ava was shocked at just how bereft Cora was. It wasn’t that she thought her mother to be a heartless cow or devoid of feeling, just that she had never really spoken of Betty and when she had it had been in hushed tones. Betty was most definitely the blacksheep of the Scott family, having left Derry for a bohemian lifestyle in the South of France. Ava couldn’t say she had blamed her one bit for leaving Derry behind – Derry wasn’t exactly a fun place to be by all accounts. Ava would have left too – especially if she had found a very handsome man to marry who wanted to take her away from it all. South of France versus the Bogside and tear gas? Who could have blamed her? But it seemed there were elements in her family who had felt betrayed in some way by Betty’s departure. Sure they were all meant to be in this together, weren’t they? Whatever the reason, Betty was not someone who was spoken about very often. There weren’t even family holidays en masse to Provence even though at family gatherings it was agreed it must be lovely out there.

  Looking at her mother now, bent double in grief in her armchair, her sobs racking her body, Ava wondered if maybe she just hadn’t wanted to let her sister go, knowing perhaps she would never come home?

  “Oh Mum,” she said, kneeling down beside Cora and pulling her into a hug. “I’m so sorry!”

  “I just thought I would see her again . . . there was so much we needed to say –” Cora broke off, sniffing loudly right in Ava’s ear which made her shudder – she never liked getting too close to a clatter of snotters.

  Pulling back, she looked at her mother. “I’m sure she knew how you felt about her,” she soothed, not quite knowing why she was saying that. She didn’t, in honesty, know if Betty knew a damn about her mother and how she felt about her. Ava didn’t know how her mother felt about Betty. She just didn’t come up in conversation that often.

  “How could she not tell us she was sick? She must have known for a long time – it was cancer. Were we so bad she would rather die out there without a being belonging to her close by? And then to be told by letter . . . she had written it in advance to be sent to me . . .” Cora gestured to a letter on the side table and broke into a fresh dose of sobbing. “I would have gone. I would have been there. I know we all have our lives and we’re all busy but we would have gone, or we would have brought her home . . .”

  Ava hugged her mother again. “She’s been in France a long time. Longer than she was ever here. Maybe she just considered that home?”

  Cora sniffed. “Home is always home,” she said. “She should have let us say goodbye.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mum,” Ava repeated. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. You’ve had a shock. Have you spoken to the rest of the family yet?”

  Cora shook her head. “I just called you. I just wanted you.”

  Ava felt her heart swell at her mother’s honest emotion. An only child, her widowed mother leant on her heavily at times. Of course she would have called her in the circumstances.

  Ava kissed her and stood up.

  “She’s left you something,” Cora said as Ava turned on her heel to go to the kitchen.

  “What?” Ava stopped and turned, sure she must have misheard. How could, why would, Betty leave her anything?

  “It says so in the letter. You have to go to a solicitor’s in Belfast on Wednesday to hear more.” Cora spoke softly, her head downwards.

  Ava felt absolutely and totally confused. Sure they had spoken for a long time at her granny’s funeral – laughing like old friends – but to leave her something?

  “Really?” she asked. “Why would she do that?”

  “You must have meant a lot to her,” Cora said, looking up, her eyes filling with tears again. “Sure don’t you mean a lot to us all?”

  Chapter 2

  Hope

  Dylan McKenzie was six foot four inches tall and waswhat could only be described as a sexy fecker. Hope could spend hours just staring at him – at his piercing blue eyes, his chiselled jaw, the bulge in his designer jeans and that perfect smile. When he held her – wrapped her in his arms – she felt as though she belonged. She could stay there forever. If only life didn’t have to get in the way.

  He knew her better than anyone did. He teased her mercilessly about what he described as her internet addiction. “You’re a nosy fecker, Ms Scott,” he would tease. “The FBI doesn’t know what it’s missing not hiring you.”

  She would laugh back and tell him not to knock it. There wasn’t much going on with her friends that she wasn’t privy to and with him out working most weeknights and her exiled in Belfast – a full hour and half away from her home city – it was the closest to a social life she came to these days. Dylan was always only too happy to listen to her updates from home. If she was awake when he rolled in from his nightshift she would make him a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich and tell him all the latest news.

  “Who needs Coronation Street when I’ve got you?” he said on this particular morning, supping his tea and kicking off those Size 11 shoes. “But for once, Ms Scott, you are not the only one with some gossip.”

  She smiled back, topping up his mug of tea, and leaned over. “Do tell,” she said, her face as close to his as decency would allow.

  “Cyndi has agreed, finally, to let me take her out. Isn’t that brilliant?”

  Cyndi. With a Y and an I, in that order. Hope had heard alot about Cyndi with a Y and an I over the last few months. She had listened to Dylan rave about his passion for her, how he wanted her and yearned for her. She knew Cyndi had blonde hair, was “about the same size” as her and had a very contagious laugh. Dylan had tried to replicate it, without success, on many occasions when they had been sharing a cup of tea over breakfast. His attempts had just resulted in sending Hope into fits of almost uncontrollable giggles until she had looked over and caught sight of his puppy-dog eyes looking wounded at her response.

  “Cop yourself on!” she would tease. “You’d laugh at me if I did the same.”

  Hope also knew that Cyndi was twenty-eight and from“up the country” – so she had an accent thicker than cement. Dylan was quite good at impersonating that.

  “I never thought I’d find a countrywoman so damn appealing,” Dylan had said after one of his impersonations, “but she just gets under my skin.”

  Yes, Hope thought, like ringworm, or impetigo or cellulitis . . .

  She tried her best not to show the absolute gut-wrenching pain she felt right in the pit of her stomach. He really was crazy about Cyndi, in a way that he had never been crazy about anyone else in the course of their friendship, and in that moment Hope felt her dreams of him ever realising that true love can indeed be just under your nose fall away from her.

  The bacon sandwi
ch stuck in her throat as she tried to smile. She ended up gagging, choking and wheezing in a most undignified manner while Dylan looked on, at first incredulous and then – once the gravity of the situation kicked in – with a great deal of concern.

  It was ironic, she thought as he stepped behind her, took her in his arms and thrust towards her that not only could she feel the bacon dislodge itself from her oesophagus but also the warmth of his crotch. There was, she realised, as she sipped tea and tried to regain her breath, little chance of her ever feeling the warmth of his crotch again. Not now that Cyndi had finally agreed to go out with him.

  “Jesus, Hope, talk about giving a man a heart attack. Are you okay?”

  “Something just went down the wrong way,” she stuttered, her breath ragged and her throat aching. She pushed the remainder of her bacon sandwich away.

  “Well, if you won’t have it . . .” Dylan said with a wry grin as he took the top slice of bread off and loaded it with brown sauce. He took a bite – a huge big manly bite – and sat back with his hands behind his head.

  “No one makes bacon sarnies like you, babe,” he said with a smile.

  Hope gave a half-smile, got up and walked to the sink so he couldn’t see the pain etched across her face, and resisted the urge to tell him that he’d best remember that when Cyndi was serving him some cheap bacon in some cheap slice of bread and pretending she was the be-all and end-all.

  She turned around and watched him sip the last of his tea before standing and stretching and declaring he was off to bed.

  “Have a good day, H,” he said, smiling at her affectionately and she forced herself to smile back.

  There really was feck-all chance her day was going to be good now.

  Flopping onto the sofa, pulling her naturally fair hair back from her face and switching on her laptop, she decided the absolute best course of action would be to spend a good half hour reading internet forums where people had problems much worse than hers. She wouldn’t work this morning. The freelance journalism world would survive without her. She would feel sorry for herself instead – heart-wrenchingly, gut-churningly sorry for herself.

  “Fuckitfuckitfuckit!” she swore, and then, to make herself feel better about her life, she switched on The Jeremy Kyle Show.

  Half an hour had passed and she was lying prone on the sofa, her head on a cushion, listening to an unholy row develop between two sisters who had been bonking each other’s husbands, when the phone rang.

  She glared at itwhere it lay out of reach on the floor. She didn’t want to move. She wanted to see if Ugly Sister One would lamp Ugly Sister Two and she desperately needed to know which of the two gormless husband efforts was the father of Baby Beyoncé.

  The shrill tone was hard to ignore, as was her inbuilt nosiness (a valuable quality when scrabbling for freelance work) so she rolled off the sofa with a thump and, still lying face down, reached for her phone.

  Without looking at it, she said “Hello?” as she glanced to one side to see the earring she had long thought lost nestling under the sofa amid the dustbunnies.

  “Hope, it’s Mum. I have bad news, darling.”

  Hope felt her heart sink from her stomach, where it had been resting since Dylan’s announcement earlier, to her boots.

  “Hang on, Mum,” she said, pulling herself to a sitting position and switching off the TV and the roars of the audience baying for a DNA test.She took longer than she should have for this – just seconds but they were seconds she wanted to hold close to her. Bad news was going to change things. She wanted things as they were for a moment longer.

  “Right, Mum. Sorry about that,” she said, hearing the tremble in her own voice. She pulled her knees close to her.

  “It’s Aunt Betty, darling. She’s gone.”

  “Oh,” was all Hope could manage before the tears which had been pricking in her eyes all morning finally fell. “Oh, poor Betty! Oh Mum, what happened?”

  He mother sniffled. “Cancer. It seems. But it was peaceful in the end. It seems. A week ago.”

  “A week ago? What about the funeral? Are they bringing her home?”

  “She left instructions, love. No fuss. They buried her near the vineyards – her friends from the village. Sure they were as much of a family to her as we were. She was in France for a long time.I’m sure they gave her a good send-off.”

  “Is Dad okay?”

  Her mum sniffled again. “You know Dad. He’s gone out for a walk. He’s trying to understand it all. But I told him, you know, he should have stopped trying to understand Betty a long time ago. She was her own woman. She always was.”

  “I would have loved to have been there,” Hope said sadly.

  Betty, her father’s sister, had been so kind. She had allowed Dylan and Hope to stay with her for a month while they had their year-long adventure around the world. Betty was mad as a box of frogs – individual to the core – and Hope was sure she had probably been a real troublemaker in her time. Hope would have loved to have said her last goodbyes to her – it seemed so sad that none of her family had been with her.

  “She’s with Claude now, sweetheart,” her mother soothed.

  Hope brushed the tears from her eyes and sniffed loudly.“I suppose. She is probably creating merry havoc up in heaven. Oh Mum, she was just a dote! An absolute dote.”

  “Well, darling, she obviously thought highly of you too. I’ve a letter here and you’ve been invited to the reading of her will.”

  “Fuck off!” Hope breathed, instantly shamed that she had cursed in front of her own mother.

  “Hope!” her mother tutted.

  “Sorry. She’s left me something?” The tears were back, this time thicker and faster than ever.

  “Well, according this letter from the law firm of Brady and Semple she has.”

  “Oh, bless her,” Hope breathed through her tears. “Oh, bless her heart! She didn’t need to do that.”

  “Well, she did, and you have to be in the law office on Wednesday at half past four to find out more.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “No!” hermother said, with mock indignation. “Clearly Betty thought more highly of you than she did of me! No, it’s just you from our crowd. And your cousin Ava.”

  “The schoolteacher?”

  “Yes, that’s what she does.”

  If it was possible for your heart to sink lower than your boots and through the very ground to the very core of the earth, this would have been that moment for Hope.

  Hope had nothing against Ava, per se. On the few occasions they had met – at family weddings and funerals –she had seemed absolutely lovely. And perfect. Sickeninglygot-it-all-together perfect. Ava was the family member everyone spoke of. Sure hadn’t she a lovely wedding? Didn’t she marry that hunky big accountant who, by all accounts, was raking it in? And her house? Feck me! You should see her house. Looks like it belongs in the Next Directory, sure it does. And she has that wee girl – with the impossibly cute curls. Not to mention every child she ever taught has gone on to win fecking Mastermind or something and all because of Mrs Campbell and her superb Primary One skills.

  Compared with Hope – who was only three months younger – Ava was always going to come out on top. Hope was the flighty one – who travelled the world and lives with a boy. But no, not in “that way”. They are “only friends”. Nope. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Aye, and she has no job either – not a proper full-time one anyway. And her house is rented.

  So, she would see Ava again and the whole family would be waiting to hear the craic about Aunt Betty and her will and Hope would no doubt come away feeling mildly shite about herself and how her life was failing to go anywhere. Oh God, now the people on Jeremy Kyle seemed relatively normal and nice even. She would prefer meeting with them for a couple of strong drinks than running into Ava and answering all that small-talk bullshit about what she was doing and who she was seeing. Pah!

  Aware that her mother was still talking, she tried to tun
e back in, just to hear her mother read the address of the solicitor’s firm and say she would email the details to her just to be sure.

  “She must have cared for you,” she said as she finished the conversation.

  “Not as much as I cared for her,” Hope sniffed, feeling her resolve weaken again.

  She ended the call and sat on the floor and cried until her eyes were swollen and her throat was raw. She cried for Aunt Betty and her passing with none of her family around her in France. She had been a young woman. She wouldn’t even have been sixty. It just didn’t seem right. Not right or fair at all. She cried that Betty would now be reunited with her beloved Claude who she spoke so tenderly of during Hope’s stay. She cried that Betty had thought of her enough to leave her some token of their friendship. And she cried for herself and her feelings for Dylan who was so utterly, completely and totally unaware that his best friend of fifteen years had fallen head over heels in love with him.

  Chapter 3

  The offices of Brady and Semple, Solicitors at Law, were grand and imposing. The receptionist had been not so grand, but imposing nonetheless. Hope had been the first to arrive and she sat tapping her foot nervously and humming to herself in the reception while she waited for Ava. The reading would be a one-off affair, it seemed, carried out by Mr Semple – who might or might not have had a first name but, regardless, definitely preferred the formality of being called mister.

  “Mr Semple will see you when Mrs Campbell has arrived,” the receptionist had said, glancing at the clock on the wall and back to her appointment book.

  “That’s fine, I’ll just . . . erm . . . take a seat, will I?” Hope asked but the receptionist had already turned her attention back to her work, leaving her standing like a cold snotter.

  Hope didn’t know why but she was nervous, and the snootiness of the receptionist hadn’t calmed her. Surely the woman behind the desk – who was at least in her late thirties so most definitely old enough to know good manners – could have tried to put her at her ease. This was a will reading after all – Hope was a bereaved woman. Hope threw the back of the receptionist’s head a half-hearted bad look and went and sat down on the very squeaky leather sofa across the office.